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Archer Materials reduces size of biochip gFET chip by 97%
News March 11, 2024 Alinda Gupta



Semiconductor company Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) has achieved a major milestone in its Biochip technology development by significantly reducing the size of its gFET (graphene field-effect transistor) chip. This achievement resulted from redesigning the circuit layouts, leading to a substantial decrease in chip size that has the potential to increase its utility in medical diagnostics.

The redesigned Biochip, featuring a sensing region with a gFET chip as its core component, now has a much smaller footprint. Each gFET chip contains multiple transistors, enhancing its sensory capabilities. The size reduction could potentially allow for greater integration with point of use diagnostics for rapid parallelised detection of diseases.

The miniaturised design has been sent to a foundry partner based in the Netherlands, Applied Nanolayers (ANL), for whole-wafer fabrication. The size of the gFET chip has been reduced from 10mm x 10mm to 1.5mm x 1.5mm, significantly increasing the yield per wafer. It will be tested on a four-inch wafer, which is expected to produce 1375 chips, compared to the 45 chips produced using earlier designs in previous four-inch wafer fabrication runs.

CEO of Archer, Dr Mohammad Choucair, said, “The significant reduction in the size of the Biochip was a great achievement by the Archer team. We have developed in-house expertise and know-how in gFET chip design.

”Archer’s Biochip innovation aims to integrate gFETs into advanced fluidic systems, creating compact lab-on-a-chip platforms for medical diagnostics. Success in this endeavor could allow for the simultaneous detection of multiple biologically relevant targets on a single chip.

Previously, Archer Materials had confirmed the fabrication and electrical conductivity of earlier iterations of gFET chip designs through manufacturing at European semiconductor foundries. The ongoing development builds upon Archer’s advancements in gFET chip designs for parallelised sensing, as demonstrated in previous four-inch wafer runs by ANL.

Independent of wafer runs at ANL, Archer has also sent gFET designs to a foundry in Spain for fabrication, with delivery anticipated within the first half of 2024.

Archer follows the ‘fabless’ chipmaker model, which internalises its chips’ design, research, and development and outsources manufacturing to specialised companies within the semiconductor supply chain. This encompasses creating a novel, smaller Biochip gFET chip design, sending the design for mass production in a commercial foundry, and overseeing chip assembly, semiconductor device electronics packaging, and relevant electrical testing.

The wafers containing the fabricated chips will undergo dicing and assembly at Archer’s newly established outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT) partner, AOI Electronics, in Japan. This partnership includes various processes such as molding, dicing, lead frame design for dedicated wafer assembly, device electronic shorting, and packaging testing.

Dr Choucair concluded “By working with Applied Nanolayers and AOI Electronics on the miniaturised gFET chips, we are strengthening our relationships with semiconductor supply-chain partners.

“These newly acquired capabilities are crucial in propelling Biochip development forward. They enable interfacing and integration with miniaturised gFET chip sensor designs. The delivery of packaged gFET chips is expected to occur in mid-2024.”

Alinda Gupta Alinda is a Business Reporter for The Sentiment